The last retailer of VHS video tapes has given up the ghost.
While major retailers have long since ditched VHS for the space-friendly DVD alternative, Distribution Video Audio was the last major supplier of VHS, supporting part of their $20 million a year business by selling mass amounts of VHS tapes on the cheap. With little fanfare last October, the company shipped their last truckload of VHS. From the company’s president:
It’s dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt. I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I’m done. Anything left in warehouse we’ll just give away or throw away.
Sic transit gloria videotape. VHS revolutionized the relationship between media producers and consumers, both with the ability to directly purchase media (rather than waiting for reruns on TV) and the ability to record material from TV itself. To the generations current growing up, the idea of “you have your five local TV channels and whatever they choose to broadcast is what you have to choose from to watch” will be as foreign as a world without TV or talking movies is to the rest of us.
Geez, thanks for making me feel so old!!! Amazing how the world has changed since the 70’s..now lets see what we do with technological marvel!
Merry Christmas Dave!
My biggest concern at the moment is inventorying what I still have on VHS and deciding which of it, if any, I want to replace, transfer, or dump.
Hmmm. All the more important, then, to pick up those B5 season sets. I have a tub of original VHS off-the-air recordings of all the eps, lovingly collected and labeled (both representing a pretty tough era in my own life as well as that of O.J. Simpson, based on the news blurbs during the commercials).